


Jasmine On My Tongue

by jacksolomon73



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Assault, Fantasy Racism, Fjolly, Fjordmauk, Genderfluid Mollymauk Tealeaf, Genderqueer Molly, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, f-slur, fjord is clueless and in love, homophobic violence, please let me know if i need to tag anything else, take care of yourselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:01:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksolomon73/pseuds/jacksolomon73
Summary: Molly is loud, colourful, a tiefling, ambiguously gendered, and unashamedly into men. It's like he walks around with a target on his back in these small towns they often frequent.Fjord can't take his eyes off him.
Relationships: Fjord/Mollymauk Tealeaf
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Jasmine On My Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Side note: I headcanon Molly as considerably more androgynous than he's portrayed in the official art.
> 
> Title is from 'Heretic Pride' by The Mountain Goats. It's a great Molly song.

It starts out as a normal evening in a tavern somewhere west of Felderwin. After some ale and conversation, nearly all of the Nein have made their way to bed, leaving Nott and Fjord to play a fairly antagonistic game of rummy at a corner table. At some point Molly had wandered back to the bar to get more drinks and started talking to a grizzled looking, muscular man. Fjord's attention is mostly on the cards, but his eyes occasionally catch on Molly's hair as it tumbles down his back, or the soft lilt of his voice, or the way the man now has a hand on the tiefling's arm, running it down Molly's shirtsleeve onto the smooth lavender skin of his forearm. He sees Molly lean forward, and whisper something into the man's ear. 

Seconds later, the man delivers a short sharp punch to the side of Molly's head and Molly crashes to the ground, his head making an audible CRACK as it hits the flagstone floor. 

'Fuckin' faggot', the man growls, breathing hard and staring down at him. 'Fuckin tricked me.' 

Before he knows what he's doing, Fjord is up and has summoned the falchion with a splash of seawater. He paces over, grabs the man roughly by the shoulder and holds the sword to his neck. 

'Get. out,' he snarls quietly through clenched teeth. The man's eyes widen in shock and then he squints up at Fjord. He presses the edge of the sword further into the man's throat, ever so slightly, daring him to make a move. Eventually, the man stumbles backwards with a grunt and leaves, furious and red-faced. 

Fjord immediately turns and kneels next to Molly. He's trying to push himself up off the floor, but his eyes roll in his head and he's gasping with pain. 

'I wasn't...,' he tries to lift his head, and it drops back to the floor. 'I didn't....Fjord,' and he grabs for Fjords arm, trying to focus on his face. 'I wasn't trying to trick anyone. I swear.'

Fjord heart tightens in his chest. 'I know, Molls. I know. Let's just get you upstairs, yeah?' He's not enjoying the way he can feel people's eyes on them, knows how quickly the mood can change in these small town bars. He hoists Molly off the floor and helps him towards the stairs, Nott's lantern yellow eyes wide with shock as he glances at her on the way past. 

She follows the two of them up the stairs, and as they clear the landing she whispers to him sharply.

'Should I get Jester?'

Fjord shakes his head. 'Nah. Let her sleep. I'll take care of him.' 

She nods, and squeezes Molly's arm gently. He's leaning heavily on Fjord, his eyelids fluttering a little as he tries to focus. With one more concerned look in his direction, she heads off towards her room.

Fjord pulls Molly into their shared chamber, and sits him gently down on the bed. He kneels on the floor in front of him, a steadying hand on each of the tiefling's shoulders. 

'Hold on a sec. M' gonna get you a potion.' 

Molly doesn't say a word, just reaches up and scrubs at his face a little, swaying dangerously. Fjord rummages in his pack for a few tense seconds, and then helps Molly drink down the red, viscous liquid. He swallows, and sighs, a little clarity returning to his eyes. He looks directly at Fjord. 

'Sorry.' he mutters quietly. 

Fjord shakes his head. 'That guy was an asshole,' he says. 'Why are you apologising?'

Molly sighs. 'This isn't...the first time something like that has happened to me. He thought I was a woman. I should've said something, earlier on. But I just...,' he drops his gaze. 'I wanted it to last a little longer.' He laughs mirthlessly, and Fjord has never heard this tone from him before, this undercurrent of bitterness. It makes him want to break the world, to clear it of all the people who allowed this little seed of darkness and self-doubt to take root in his friend. He pulls back a little, and squeezes Molly's hands so that the tiefling looks at him again. He clears his throat.

'I can't pretend that I understand....,' he gestures to Molly, taking him in, '...the way that you are in the world. But you're a goddamn beautiful person, Molly. Any fucker who messes with you is gonna have to deal with me.'

Molly smiles wide at that, his eyes closing happily. 'Aw,' he singsongs. 'You charmer.'

Fjord chuckles, rising to his feet. 'Go to bed, asshole. I'll see you in the morning.'

And they sleep, but not before Fjord lies awake for a while, in the cold and the dark of the room, listening to Molly's breathing and thinking about the things he hasn't said. 

\-------

It's a few days later, and Molly is out on a jaunt around town, starting with the bathhouse in the morning and then stopping off at the market to look at the trinkets and baubles and pick up some pastries for Jester.

He's on his way back to the tavern as the sky starts to turn to dusk, and it's quiet in this part of town, and he's not paying attention, checking over his purchases, tail swishing happily behind him. 

He hears voices suddenly, and then rough hands grab him and push him into an alleyway, bodies surrounding him on all sides. 

'That's him!' he hears one of them shout, and with a jolt he recognises the man from the other night. He hisses and starts to speak in Infernal but the man punches him square in the mouth, knocking his head sideways. The others grab his arms. 

'Fucking devil boy,' the man snarls. 'Fucking fag devil. You're not welcome here.' 

Molly tries to twist away from them, tail lashing and teeth bared, and manages to move away for a second before they catch him again. They grab him by the horn and SLAM his head sideways into the wall, and pain explodes across his vision. He feels his right horn crack on impact and it's a horrible kind of sweet pain, as if someone had split a tooth right down to the nerve. He staggers forwards against the wall, trying to pull himself upright again, but his vision is swimming and he can't tell which way is up. He holds out for a good few seconds before his knees give way and he collapses to the ground on his side, spots dancing across his eyes. Someone comes forward and kicks him in the stomach so hard he retches. They keep kicking him and he feels his ribs break, sounds being punched out of him with every impact. Another foot lands on his head, pressing it down into the dirt and then _pushing_ it back so that the side of his face scrapes along the ground. He hears one of them speaking but he can't make out the words. He hears another of them spit, and then he blacks out.

\-------

Fjord walks through the gently falling snow hours later, calling out for Molly. He looks down countless roads and alleys before he finds the right one, where a heap of colourful fabric lies near the end, dusted with snow.

'Shit.'

Fjord runs forwards and crashes down to his knees, scrabbling around until he can get an arm underneath and hoist the tiefling off the cold ground and into his lap. He repeats Molly's name softly, taking in the damage as he does so. He sees multiple sets of footprints in the snow around them, and its not hard to piece together what happened. 

Molly's eyes open halfway, his body limp and freezing. He opens his mouth to speak, and his teeth are stained red. 

'My hero,' he manages, attempting some kind of a wry smile despite his broken face. 

Fjord smiles back helplessly, tears pricking his eyes. 

He tries to stop the bleeding, to keep Molly conscious, talking to him softly and pulling him closer to him to try and transfer some body heat. He calls out for help, even though he knows its fruitless, that there's no one around.

Molly starts to shake violently, his body going into shock. The snow falls on the two of them, the only sound Molly's gasping breaths as he tries to get enough air into his functioning lung. Blood bubbles up between his teeth. 

Fjord kisses Molly's cheek, finding a place that looks like it won't hurt. He gathers him up in his arms, flinching when he hears him cry out in pain. He starts to make his slow way through the snow back to the inn, staggering under Molly's weight, praying he can make it without falling. 

\-------

Jester arrives in the room as Fjord is laying Molly down on the bed, trying to make him comfortable with shaking hands.

They pull back his shirt, and see the word DEVILFAG scratched into his skin. Jester puts a hand to her mouth and starts to cry, awful little moans pulled from deep inside her. She wraps her tail tightly around herself and rocks a little, and Fjord suddenly knows there are some things he will never understand, experiences that Molly and Jester share that he will never know about. Jester immediately lays hands on Molly's chest and the message seals up, leaving no trace behind other than dried blood on the surface. She goes to work pulsing healing light into his body, occasionally lifting a hand to stroke his hair and unstick strands of it from the congealing mess of the side of his face. She speaks to him soothingly in a constant patter of Infernal. 

At one point she looks up at his cracked horn as the green light emanates from her hand on his chest, and she sobs again when the crack doesn't close.

By the end of it, Jester has her head resting gently on Molly's chest, eyes screwed shut as tears still seep from under her lids. She listens to him breathe through his newly reinflated lung, her hands still aglow with pale green light. Eventually she straightens and wipes her face. Fjord puts a hand on her shoulder, feeling redundant and intrusive. 

'That's all I can do for tonight' she says. 'I'm tapped. I'm sorry, Fjord.'

He pulls her in for a hug. 'Thankyou,' he says. 'I dunno what we'd do without you.' He pulls back to look at her. 'Are you ok, though?' 

She nods, pushing her hair out of her face and sniffing. 'I'm ok,' she says in a small voice. He doesn't quite believe her, but he doesn't press it. She looks back at Molly, who is breathing calmly now, his head tilted slightly to the side. 'Will you stay with him tonight?' she asks. Fjord nods. 

'Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going anywhere,' he shrugs. 'I couldn't leave him if I tried.'

She looks up at him, and some of the sparkle returns to her eyes, a cheeky smile curling at the corners of her mouth. Fjord braces himself for questions, but to her credit she simply pulls him in for another hug and then goes to leave.

'Take care of him,' she sings on her way out. 

Fjord turns back to the figure on the bed. He could just sit here, in this chair. He could do that. But Molly is still shivering, and Fjord can't stop thinking about him lying in that alley for hours, in pain and alone. Without taking his eyes off Molly's sleeping form he removes his boots and socks and slides under the covers, pulling the heavy blankets up over them both and draping an arm across Molly's chest. Eventually his eyes slide shut.

\-------

It's the early hours of the morning, grey light seeping through the shutters, when Molly shoots up in bed beside him, breathing heavily and scrabbling at the covers. Fjord sits up blearily next to him. 

'Molly?'

Molly's breathing quickens, panicking, and Fjord grabs for his hands in the darkness.

'Molly. Molls. It's ok. You're safe. We're in the tavern.' Molly looks at him, eyes wide. 

'It's ok,' Fjord says, softer this time. 'It's alright.'

Molly doesn't say anything for a long time, just stares at him with those wide red eyes. Fjord shifts uncomfortably.

'Fjord,' Molly says after what seems like an eternity. 'You're in bed with me.'

Fjord feels himself blushing furiously. He doesn't withdraw his hands. 

'I - uh - yeah. I didn't want you to be alone, is all. I'll leave if you'd rather.'

Molly gives him another long look. 'Don't leave,' he says slowly. 

Fjord nods. 'Ok.'

They stare at each other in the near darkness some more, as if waiting for something to happen, for someone to break the silence. Molly swallows, and Fjord's eyes flick down to the long line of his throat.

'Fjord.' Molly says. 

'Yeah.' says Fjord.

'...Thankyou.' 

Fjord nods, and looks away. 'M'sorry that happened to you. I'd like to kill those guys.'

Molly laughs a little. 'Let's get some more sleep first. Stay with me?'

They settle back down under the covers. 

\-------

Fjord wakes to the sound of birdsong. Golden light cuts in neat lines across their bed, filtering through the shuttered windows. Molly is facing him, breathing softly, his long curls falling over his tattoed shoulder. Fjord stares at him for a while in the quiet, and he thinks of the things in his life that have passed him by, that he was too afraid to reach out for until it was too late.

He reaches out now, bringing a hand up to the side of Molly's face and brushing his hair back from the graze there, still only partially healed. Molly's eyes flicker open and he smiles. 

'Morning sailor,' he croaks.

Fjord says nothing, just strokes his hand back through Molly's hair until it rests gently at the base of his neck. He rubs his thumb over Molly's jaw, and the tiefling huffs out a little breath. Fjord suddenly feels desperately sad, the thought that he could have lost this person suddenly at the forefront of his mind.

'Molls...,' he starts, but Molly just shakes his head and kisses him. 

Fjord draws in a sharp breath and his brows knit together in surprise and want. Molly's lips are chapped and his mouth tastes like iron, and Fjord drinks him in, running his hand down along his side, careful of the bruises. Molly hums and brings a hand up behind Fjords head, and he feels his rings press gently into the short fuzz there.

They move closer to each other, and Fjord feels like he could do this forever, just kiss Molly in the warmth and comfort of their bed, in a thousand shared rooms all over Exandria, for as long as Molly wants him to. 

His thoughts are interrupted by the feeling of Molly wriggling and insinuating himself against him like a cat. 

'You could've died yesterday,' he chuckles. 'Give it a second!'

But Molly swings himself up over Fjord, bracing himself on his arms and smiling down at him. 

'All the more reason to seize the day, don't you think?' 

And he goes back to kissing him.

They miss breakfast. The day goes on outside. 

They take their time.


End file.
